In the news

The Other Drama at Fenway Park This Fall

November 21, 2013

The Red Sox win­ning the World Series wasn’t the only drama unfolding at Fenway Park this fall: Owner John Henry has been fighting to avoid tes­ti­fying in a high-​​stakes class-​​action law­suit against his fellow base­ball owners.

The suit takes aim at Major League Baseball’s decades-​​old blackout policy, which requires fans living in cities without a team to buy a pricey MLB-​​owned game bundle to watch their home team play ball. But there may be some­thing else at play, according to Roger Abrams, a one­time Major League Base­ball salary arbi­trator and now a North­eastern Uni­ver­sity Law pro­fessor. Abrams believes Henry may be tar­geted to tes­tify in a depo­si­tion to reveal closely guarded finan­cials to show the sport’s anti-​​trust exemp­tion is bad for consumers.

“It might be a Trojan horse,” Abrams said. “Baseball’s man­age­ment, or base­ball cen­tral, or any of the 30 clubs like to keep their books pri­vate, and maybe that’s why they’re resisting [the sub­poena]. The depo­si­tion might reveal the real profit and loss state­ments base­ball doesn’t like to reveal.”

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